Well, this is curious: Judging by the opening credits, this episode was written by Volume One’s wunderkind Bryan Fuller, and yet it’s still no damn good. I can’t even decide where to dive in: Do I start with the moderately uninteresting plotline (Nathan), the distinctly uninteresting plotline (Tracy), the tedious plotline (Hiro), or the claw-my-eyeballs-out plotline (Noah)? By default, I'm starting with the carnival people. Which doesn't make the most sense chronologically, but I think I like them the best.(During a commercial break, they showed a fleeting bit of that Sprint-sponsored interactive story with Samuel and Lydia and Edgar. Go to NBC.com/Heroes and watch some Sprint commercials if you want to see more of it. You probably don’t.)
At the carnival, Lydia and Edgar have an esoteric talk about Samuel seeking revenge for his brother’s death. Lydia and Samuel go off together for a session of knife-throwing and tattooing. A tattoo of Noah Bennet appears on Lydia’s skin.
Tracy, in her liquid state, rises out of the bathtub. When she solidifies, she’s already got a bath towel chastely wrapped around her, which is kind of a nice trick. There’s a montage of Tracy getting dressed, putting on her makeup, putting on her heels… Ms. Ali Larter, you’re a knockout, but this reeks of filler. She saunters into a nice restaurant and catches the attention of Governor Malden, once again played by Bruce Boxleitner. And since I squandered my chances last season to make unnecessary Scarecrow and Mrs. King references, he’s going to be Scarecrow from here on out. Oh, sure, a Babylon 5 reference would be (faintly) more au courant, but I’m all for nostalgia. Tracy tells Scarecrow she’s been dealing with a family crisis, but she’s ready to start work again. He asks her out to dinner. In his dismal DC apartment, Noah Bennet drinks orange juice and glumly looks at divorce papers. Peter stops by to show him the compass tattoo… which has now disappeared. Peter wants to investigate the carnival people, but Noah is kind of assy about not wanting to help him and blows him off. I guess this is only fair, since Peter was kind of assy about not wanting to help Noah two episodes ago, but hey, could someone’s motivations remain consistent from episode to episode? That’d really help things out a lot. Claire drops by, and we enter some kind of weird vortex where time stands still. Yeah, she stops by just to talk. No reason for it. Kind of like how Noah stopped by her dorm room just to talk a couple episodes ago. Yep, every bit as exciting as that scene. Seriously, this is a show about super-powers. Cyborg ninjas need to swarm in and start attacking or something, because this is ridiculous. Claire goes through the want ads and tries to find her dad a job. She suggests acting out a mock interview. Oh, holy hell, life is too short for this.
Claire gives Noah a pep talk, in which she delivers the following utterly bizarre and nonsensical statement: “Your whole life has been about trying to help people.” Where “people” may be interpreted to mean “Claire.” Sure enough, when Noah asks her to name one person he’s helped, she says, “Me.” They talk about identity, and yes, the exact line of dialogue “Why do I suddenly feel like you’re the parent and I’m the kid?” is used. Bryan Fuller, you have made me very sad.
Later, Tracy meets Noah for sushi and tells him she got her job back, but she’s conflicted: “It just feels like something’s missing. Something needs to change.” Good to see Tracy isn’t any more thrilled about the prospective return to the “Tracy, the high-powered lobbyist” plotline than I am.
Tracy meets Scarecrow in an elegant bar, where she tells him she wants to set agendas and help people who can’t help themselves. Tracy’s all over the fricking map this season, too. Wasn’t she murdering people two episodes ago? Scarecrow suggests having sex instead. Points for consistency for one character, at least. Tracy, who is no longer that kind of girl, heads for the ladies room instead. She starts reverting to a liquid state and has to fight to keep herself under control. She storms out of the bar, leaving behind a very confused Scarecrow.At Yamagato Industries, Kimiko announces that she and Ando are getting married. She asks Hiro to give her away at the wedding. Ando is disgruntled about this: The wedding isn’t for a year, and Hiro will be dead by then. Yes, Ando definitely does seem more concerned about messing up the logistics of his wedding than about his dying friend. Huh. I’m pretty sure the scene wasn’t supposed to play out that way. Curious. Hiro fields a call on the Dial-A-Hero line: There’s a jumper on the roof of the Yamagato building. Hiro books it up there and talks with Tadashi, a disgruntled ex-employee, who was fired for inappropriate use of the Xerox machine during a company year-end party. Tadashi jumps from the roof, and Hiro blips back in time.
Hiro returns to a few moments before the phone call from Tadashi, so we get to see the same Hiro-Ando scene again. Hiro tells Ando he went back in time and prevented Tadashi from photocopying his ass at the company party, thus preventing his suicide. And yet, Tadashi calls again. He’s still on the roof, still planning on jumping. This time, Tadashi made a photocopy of his ass at a totally different party. This is tedious. Tadashi jumps again, Hiro goes back in time again, Hiro returns to the office again, we see the Hiro/Ando scene again, Hiro answers the phone again, Tadashi is on the roof again. Hiro and Tadashi have a long talk about how life is precious and fleeting. They hug it out, and Tadashi leaves without killing himself.
This inspires Hiro to tell Kimiko the truth about his illness. He does this, then reels from sudden pain. While Ando calls an ambulance, Hiro blips away again.
In DC, Angela stops by Nathan/Sylar’s office, bearing crates of childhood memorabilia, which she hopes will reinforce his belief that he’s really Nathan. Nathan picks up a toy plane, and all of a sudden we’re in black-and-white childhood-flashback territory. No, Heroes, please don’t do this. I’ve been good to you. I’ve kept watching, even though I don’t really want to anymore. Don’t punish me with pointless childhood flashbacks. Wasn’t 1961 enough? Nathan picks up a baseball cap and flashes back to a memory of a woman in a swimming pool, surrounded by blood.
Nathan visits Paramedic Pete at the hospital and demonstrates his power to move cans with his mind. He says he’s gaining new powers all the time: He can touch objects and see their past history. (“Psychometrics,” Peter notes sagely. Wow. When did Peter become the brains of Heroes?) Anyway, Nathan mentions that when he touched his baseball cap, he saw his childhood friend Kelly Houston, daughter of Angela’s friend Millie, dead in a pool. He decides to stop by Millie’s house.
Millie believes Kelly ran away after a weekend she spent with Nathan when they were teenagers -- at the time, Millie hired a private investigator to look into Kelly’s disappearance, but eventually concluded Kelly had just run off to London. Millie leaves Nathan on his own, and he prowls around the pool, touching things and having black-and-white flashbacks to Teen Nathan and Teen Kelly. When he touches the diving board, he flashes to Kelly hitting her head and accidentally drowning. Nathan meets with Angela in a bar. He wonders why he can’t remember anything about Kelly’s death. Angela says she took care of things and had the Haitian wipe Nathan’s memory of the unpleasantness. Nathan always seems vaguely surprised to discover his mom is sort of despicable. Slow learning curve, Nathan.
Nathan returns to Millie’s house and tells her about Kelly’s death. Millie kicks him out. He calls the police, but hangs up before he turns himself in. A thug sneaks up behind him in a parking structure and knocks him out. Millie tells Angela that Nathan confessed to being involved in Kelly’s death, but that she didn’t believe him. While this happens, Nathan’s assailant dumps him in a ditch, riddles him with bullets, shovels dirt over him, and calls Millie to tell her it’s been taken care of.
And in the final shot, Sylar claws his way out of the grave.
Comments
As mildly critical as I was about some of FF's dialogue last episode, it sounds like a trivial issue compared to this episode.
Still, nice Photoshopping Morgan.
The Fuller thing has me confused too, Dan. A) I thought he left before shows were written, and B) it was slow-paced and cliche-ridden (seriously, HRG uses the exact phrase, “Why do I suddenly feel like you’re the parent and I’m the kid?”, which is unforgivable). There's got to be a story behind this episode. A bad yet illuminating story.
Still, nice Photoshopping Morgan.
It's important to have hobbies. Notice how I didn't even mention the M-word anywhere in my recap. Bizarrely, mucking up the promo photos did make me feel a little better about the season, as did doing this.
(It's probably just as well Boy-Morgan has officially bailed on Heroes and no longer even reads the recap. I think my horrid Photoshop skillz would make him weep. Professional integrity, you see.)
For example, over the summer we wondered what they would have Claire doing. And we hoped, prayed, that they wouldn't fall into the lazy, cliched trap of sending her to college to live a normal life, but that she would find herself caught up in mysteries anyway. In Moragn's script HRG and Claire are working together as part of a new legit Company. So adventures happen naturally as part of their day-to-day work and we avoid the awful scripts of kids in college written by old people long gone from college.
In Morgan's script we also had a great villain - the mastermind guy who on second reading struck me as a Lex Luthor type - so clever that he can see many moves ahead. And then Sadie Sullivan, his side-kick, another great character.
Sadly the real show seems not to be even trying.
I'm biased, but I liked my script (and my purely theoretical direction for the new season) much better than what we've been given.
Morgan, once again you’re actually in my head with this show. You nailed all the thoughts that go through my head while watching last night’s episode. This was written by Fuller? Really? Because it was slow and uninteresting and…generally tedious.
For crying out loud, how hard is it to keep characterizations consistent and then slowly move them around. I’m getting whiplash with the characters all over again. I have no idea what motivates them, and why they act the way they do.
I honestly have nothing to say about the Hiro storyline because I didn’t care. It’s hard to remember that I enjoyed these characters in season 1 so much.
The endless talking scenes between Bennet and Claire? These were not dialogue heavy scenes done right…when it’s done right I’m engrossed in what’s being discussed, revealed, suggested. This felt like I was listening in some random conversation on the subway just to pass the time. And when Claire said that Bennet had spent his life helping people I was befuddled. Since when has helping others been Bennet’s objective? I’m glad that at least it was spelled out that “people=Claire” but it rubbed me the wrong way that it was treated so lightheartedly. Just because Claire gets his protection doesn’t negate the terrible things he’s done to others.
Serves him right that he has no marketable skills.
No more flashbacks please! On that note, give time travel a rest. Just say no.
As for Sylar clawing his way out of the grave…I should be excited but it all feels so ho-hum. If he’s at least a dick about the whole thing from this point on I’ll be happy.
And if Mohinder shows up and the two of them get into a heated exchange I’ll be over the moon…which means it will never happen.
BTW Morgan, your script was a billion times more interesting than what I’ve seen on this show so far.
That's my problem in an nutshell. Tracy is an unfathomable cipher. I don't get what she wants, because it changes from episode to episode. Does she want violent revenge? Does she just want her old life back? Does she want to help people? Two episodes ago, she was hell-bent on murdering Bennet and Danko! By default, I give the edge to Nathan's plotline -- I did genuinely like how Angela has always been mucking about in Nathan's life, and I liked how Millie coolly planned to have Nathan whacked -- but even that pulled its punches.
The episode was just... lazy, and tired, and tepid. Does the overplayed gag about photocopying inappropriate body parts at a company party even register as humor anymore? If they'd just taken the time to come up with something fresher -- I dunno, maybe Tadashi keeps taking a whiz in the punchbowl at office parties -- it would have helped.
Just because Claire gets his protection doesn’t negate the terrible things he’s done to others.
Thank you! It struck me while watching this episode that the writers must genuinely think HRG is a good guy. Wow. Remember back in "Company Man" where Claude objects to Bennet about the Company performing vivisections on people with abilities? Guess what, Bennet? If you have ever at any point voluntarily involved yourself with vivisections, you're not a good person. If you hunt down little Molly with the intention of killing her to eliminate a possible future danger to Claire, you're not a good person. I'm fine with HRG being shady. It makes him an interesting character. But please don't feed us a line of crap about how he's helped so many people. It reminds me of last season where they tried to convince us that Angela only does evil things for the greater good. We're not stupid. We watch the show. We've seen what Angela and Bennet have done in the past, and just outright telling us they're really good people doesn't make us forget about it.
...Wow, that got a little tirade-ish.
BTW Morgan, your script was a billion times more interesting than what I’ve seen on this show so far.
Thank you! I think, if nothing else, my script demonstrated that it would be a pretty simple thing for the show to get back on track. Simple formula: You know all the basic mistakes the writers have been making? Stop making them. Probem solved.
I think the "Angela mucking about in Nathan's life" would work better for me if 1)it were more drawn out and 2) there was any consistency to Angela.
Which goes back to the retconning of characters when the audience knows better. One of the biggest problems this show has is its insistence on taking complex and interesting characters that walk that very human gray line and turning them into uncomplicated and boring one-note versions of themselves. This show sees a popular character (like Sylar, HRG, Angela) and thinks that to keep the audience in their corner they need to redeem or make the character positive. Kring doesn't seem to grasp that people can be drawn to characters who we don't necessarily agree with but who still intrigue and fascinate us.
Bennet did horrible things in the past. He justified it for the greater good but it was still bad. He pointed a gun at Molly and was ready to shoot her--a child--and was only stopped because of Mohinder. I don't need Bennet being treated with kids gloves now to make him more "palatable". I liked that he walked that shadowy line in season 1.
At the end of last season I was excited about the Nathan/Sylar storyline because I imagined it playing out a few different ways. None of which happened. I feel so disconnected from what we're getting. Reading your script was this reminder that the show could and should be so much better than it is but it's like it prefers to be the underachieving student who could be on Honour Roll but is trying to coast on one really good year and a habit of mediocrity.
The one thing I do like is that Mohinder (and Sendhil by extension) cannot be held accountable or made a scapegoat for the way the show is still falling very short. I know he'll be showing up in a bit but for now I'm a bit relieved that no one can point the finger at him for the season so far.
Three excellent examples. There was nothing sympathetic about Sylar in the first season, and yet we loved him, simply because he was fascinating and scary and formidable. Now he's none of those things, all because they tried to make him sympathetic. His character no longer has any internal logic or consistency, and thus it's not fun to watch him. Ditto for Angela, who fell so far so fast last season.
Think of how cool it'd be if we were currently in our fourth season of Sylar being evil and devious, if he'd spent the past two seasons amassing more powers and messing with Mohinder's head and scheming to take over the world, if we'd been given the means to understand what made him tick without ever being asked to sympathize with him. I'm sorry we were denied that chance.
Absolutely! And what kills me is that back in season 1 the episode "Five Years Gone" suggested that very storyline. So how did the writers/Kring go from already having that "what if?" built in story to completely going in another direction and one that destroyed a handful of characters along the way? I couldn't even imagine the Hiro that we see now on our show ever turning into the Hiro from that particular future. Instead our Hiro seems to have regressed.
I'm so tired of the missteps.
Also, as excited as I was to see Ernie Hudson in the preview for the next episode I'm annoyed that he'll never have a scene with Danko. I want my "Oz" reunion with Warden Glynn and Governor Devlan being hardasses and generally ineffectual in containing the masses.
I'm going to rename Strauss the United States of Tracy because lord knows the writers are doing their best to give her multiple personalities.
Thank you for saving me from my grumpiness with your most excellent photoshopping Morgan.
Yeah. I think overall V.4 was better than V.3, and I think this current volume has the potential to be better than V.5. But I'm enjoying it less, much less, because I'm frustrated that they're piling mistakes upon mistakes without ever learning anything.
Also, as excited as I was to see Ernie Hudson in the preview for the next episode I'm annoyed that he'll never have a scene with Danko. I want my "Oz" reunion with Warden Glynn and Governor Devlan being hardasses and generally ineffectual in containing the masses.
Ha! I love it. Good to see Ernie, especially roughing up Sylar. The rest of the preview sort of failed to thrill. Peter's new romance? Gretchen macking on Claire? Hard to get too excited about any of that.
I started losing my marbles during that scene. Just, wow. Spare me from any future scenes of Claire going through the want ads and talking about jobs in lumber sales.
Thank you for saving me from my grumpiness with your most excellent photoshopping Morgan.
My pleasure, Lou. My personal favorite is the one where Mo's slouching between Tracy and Malden, arms folded, with a look of, "Are you kidding me? This is more important than giving me any screentime this season?" on his lovely face.
Alas, I spent most of the episode playing a furious round of Plants vs. Zombies. I did like Swoosie Kurtz putting the hit out on Nathan.
Not to nitpick (heh), but I believe Ando was typing fake Japanese at the keyboard (one keystroke = one word). Ando's method would be like having a keyboard comprised entirely of words. Which, come to think of it, would be kind of awesome.
Hey! I finally spotted Mohinder in the episode!
Wasn't it great how much screentime he got? I'm still not sure what he was doing with that skull in Millie's yard. And it would have been nice if they'd given him some lines.
I think Mohinder might just have uncovered Millie's daughter. No wonder Millie went psycho on Nathan's ass. That's cruel and tacky...
Aw, I wish we still had Mohinder around to glamorously pose with human skulls while looking teary and distraught. I like the dog looking up at Nathan: "Dude, you know there's a guy with a skull, like, right behind you?"
Exactly. Imagine if every season/chapter thereafter, they'd slowly, but ever so surely, worked their way towards that future. Maybe some of the characters (most likely Hiro and Peter) would have tried to stop the future from taking place, only to have their efforts to stop it bring it even more sharply into existence.
That would have been awesome. Just a slow, gradual build to that predestined future would have given the show an inbuilt sense of purpose and a sense of tension that it would otherwise lack.
Heck, they could have even dilly-dallied around in other plotlines as the urge took them. All it would take would be one small ramification from a (seemingly) minor subplot that indicated that, yep, another domino had fallen in the Five Years Gone future. And voila! That subplot suddenly takes on an importance it would otherwise not have had.
And, heck, why not a once-a-year revisit to the future and/or from Future Hiro reminding them that this future was still there (and possibly getting even worse) and was drawing inexorably closer? That would have been awesome. A ticking clock to the series as a whole.
If I ever get taken back in time and become a member of the Heroes writing staff, that's what I'm proposing.
This is precisely what I thought this show was going to do ever since we saw that future. And once in blue moon it seems like it's going to get back on track and go that way and then it doesn't and I'm left scratching my head lamenting wasted opportunities.
I love your idea about this predestined future that was always going to be no matter how many times they thought they were changing it...slowly seeing another piece fall into place.
Now I'm getting excited over a "never will be" storyline.
Why wait for time travel to make this happen? If you want to storm the studio, remove Kring from power and take over the writers room I'm more than willing to help you do that.
Brilliant stuff with having the entire show head towards the 5YG universe. I'm with Levitatethis -- let's just overthrow the writers' room and make this happen. Next episode: Things are going as planned, and then suddenly Evil Alternate Future Hiro arrives, with his slicked-back hair and katana and soul patch (maybe he's got Mohinder with him, too, who has been hanging out in the 5YG universe for the past several episodes for as-yet-unrevealed reasons), to tell Present Hiro, "Hey, you know that awful future you thought you averted? Still happening, dude." And they could take it from there.
Seriously, I thought that was where they were heading toward the end of last season. Sylar had shape-shifting ability! He was impersonating Nathan! I mean... come on! The road not taken. Sigh.
In lieu of overthrowing the Heroes offices, I'm trying to see if I have any high-powered connections at NBC-Universal (hah) who, in the imminent event of the show's cancellation, can put me in charge of developing a Kring-free spinoff series. I think I could sell NBC on this: I could keep it low-budget, since I'd be mostly stealing the lower-paid cast members (hi, Sendhil!), and I have no real idea of the premise yet, but all the focus would be on making sure it was exquisitely written. Dan, Levitatethis, feel like joining my writing staff?
And once in blue moon it seems like it's going to get back on track and go that way and then it doesn't
Exactly. If they're going to go there (and they may well still have it in the back of their minds), then they need to make it clearer to the audience. We should be dreading the imminent arrival of this future and yet be seeing regular evidence that it's still coming.
I usually don't like things being spelled out in my television. But if they want to go that way, then the occasional 'OMG - this is just like that awful future' from Hiro and/or Future Hiro would help remind viewers what's going on. And, because you can't expect every viewer to have watched that episode (I'm assuming a universe where ratings might have increased and they might have gained new viewers over the intervening seasons), a semi-regular revisit/reminder of the future would be needed.
Such a revisit could tweak details to take into account new actors, new plot threads, correct mistakes. For example, maybe Future Hiro reveals that one of the prime forces of villainy in this future is a bitter Indian man whose marriage was broken up by a pair of crazy Japanese youngsters.
do you ever run into phrases that lead you to some other Skulky-heavy site, or do all Google roads lead here?
Nope. It's all you. As far as Google is concerned, your are the Wikipedia of everybody's favourite turticular hero. Hold your head high, Morgan.
Oh, yes. In fact, I believe the working title of the episode (before they settled on the more mundane "Acceptance") was "Mohinderpalooza!!!" Yes, three exclamation points.
(Re: the episode title -- do you suppose this is the writing staff's way of telling us, "Look, the show's just never going to be as good as it once was, so you should probably just accept it"? Because I don't see how it applies any other way.)
I always could get the hang of Thursdays...
Aw, a Hitchhiker's Guide reference! Outstanding. Still Wednesday here, and it's kind of a stinky one: in addition to sundry other rejections and failures, my Heroes spec script got knocked out of the quarterfinals of the TV division of some screenplay competition. At least no other Heroes script made the cut. That would have been salt in the wound.
For example, maybe Future Hiro reveals that one of the prime forces of villainy in this future is a bitter Indian man whose marriage was broken up by a pair of crazy Japanese youngsters.
Heh. Heh. Yes. And Molly ends up a die-hard terrorist, thanks to her abandonment issues.
If they're going to do the Evil Alternate Future, though, I'm going to have to insist it's the true 5YG universe where Claire is a waitress in a Texas diner, and not the tweaked version we got in Volume Three where Claire is a gun-toting, Peter-torturing nitwit.
Damn fool judges! Incompetence everywhere! Commiserations, Morgan. That sucks.
Molly ends up a die-hard terrorist, thanks to her abandonment issues.
Exactly. I'd love to see Evil Future Teen Molly, hellbent on getting revenge on all the twits who forgot they were raising her.
Probably Sylar too, I guess.
I'm going to have to insist it's the true 5YG universe where Claire is a waitress in a Texas diner
Also, she's an ursine lycanthrope! Bringing fresh new meaning to the term Claire-Bear!
That was pretty much my reaction. Naah, it's all good. I figured that one might be a hard sell, actually, since Heroes is so plot-specific, and if you get a judge unfamiliar with the twists and turns of the show, it's going to go nowhere. On the other hand, if I had ended up with a judge who watched the show yet was frustrated with the decline in quality, I'm pretty sure I would have sailed clean through to the finals. It's still up for contention in a bigger, better script competition, so fingers crossed for the right judges next time.
Also, she's an ursine lycanthrope! Bringing fresh new meaning to the term Claire-Bear!
I would fully support an ursine lycanthrope plotline for Claire. In fact, at this point I think that's the only plotline for Claire I would support.
And this is why I'm an integral prat of your writing team, Morgan.
(No, that's not a typo)
I just want to see HRG investigate some bear attacks on innocent Texans, shake his head sadly and say 'Oh, Claire-Bear, what have you done?'. That would make me smile so much.
Aw, I always think of you as an integral prat, Dan.
If there's still room on that writing team of yours Morgan, I'm in!
Absolutely! I still have no real idea what direction this spinoff will take, but I'm pretty sure it will have a lot of Mohinder.
I like the spinoff idea. At this point, sadly, Original Recipe Heroes might be too tainted by too many bad mistakes to ever fully rebound in the eyes of the audience. A spinoff would be a chance to keep some of the elements that once made the show so great while leaving behind some of the baggage it's accumulated over the past couple of seasons.
Having said that I'm not sure my credentials are comparatively up to snuff. The last creative writing award I won was circa 1987. If it helps I did get a stuffed dog and some Pizza Hut vouchers out of it. Not so bad, right?